Award winning biography of voltaire
Voltaire known for.
Who was Voltaire?
François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), known as Voltaire, was a writer, philosopher, poet, dramatist, historian and polemicist of the French Enlightenment.
Voltaire most famous writing
The diversity of his literary output is rivalled only by its abundance: the edition of his complete works currently nearing completion will comprise over 200 volumes.
‘The age of Voltaire’ has become synonymous with ‘the Enlightenment’, but although Voltaire’s eminence as a philosophe is self-evident, the precise originality of his thought and writings is less easily defined.
In this section, you can explore the story of his life, works and legacy.
School of Life: Voltaire – philosopher Alain de Botton has created a short animated video on Voltaire, scripted by Nicholas Cronk: [embedded video]
LIFE
Born in Paris into a wealthy bourgeois family, he was a brilliant pupil of the Jesuits.
His rejection of his father’s attempts to guide him into a career in the law was sealed in 1718, when he invented a new na